It’s a trend that’s set to stay - and a question everyone is asked at least once a year at the annual strategy day - ‘Should we In-house our marketing and advertising this year’?
Here we look at 5 of the advantages to doing so;
1 - Cost
A clear favourite with the CFO - no more 10% commission to the ad agency, but will you really make that saving? Our survey suggests that there’s clearly some savings to be had, especially if you’re spending in excess of £2m a year on digital marketing.
If cost savings and driving efficiency are top of your agenda, you should definitely read the latest ISBA report on the state of programmatic in 2020 (LINK to The Study) to get an understanding of the true costs associated with your media
2- Deeper product knowledge
Marketing agencies are notorious for churning through staff, especially at the more junior levels - the opportunity cost of having to teach/train/remind a new recruit of your core objectives can quickly eat into any performance gains you had expected from their broad category experience. Having your own teams in place, with a clear set of objectives and understanding of both the customer, and the product can be a huge win.
3 - Conflicts of Interest
Having 2 clients in a sector is a conflict, a third makes them a ‘specialist’ - remove any doubt over chinese walls by keeping your plans and performance metrics close to your chest. In addition, the longer you keep it in house, the better aligned to your company values the marketers will get.
4 - Greater creative control
From strategic decisions, through to day-to-day campaign management, controlling the message across your customer journeys is crucial. How many times have you just happened to stumble across an old PPC ad live, or see last years’ ad trigger a sale in a weekly report? Having all of your key decision makers in the same room as the practitioners means you’re far less likely to make a mistake - and you’ll likely benefit from being able to be far more nimble too. Fast Thinkings Creative Asset Suite is an excellent tool we’ve built specifically for this purpose - apply for a free trial here
5 - Data retention
Whether your DPO is worried about data breaches, or your CMO wants to work the data harder, it makes sense to keep it In House. No one knows your data better than you, the nuances, key segments, the best way to update it - don’t risk giving away control. All of the major platforms like Google or Facebook allow (actively encourage is some instances) direct relationships - and you’ll only be paying an agency a fee to upload it anyway.
